Abstract

Introduction. According to WHO, “health policy refers to decisions, plans, and actions that are undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within a society”. Although policymaking is important to be based on scientific evidence, in many countries, evidence-informed decision-making remains the exception rather than the rule. Aim: This work presents a cloud-based Decision Support System for public health decision-making. Methods: In CrowdHEALTH, the concept of a Public Health Policy (PHP) is directly connected with one or more Key Performance Indexes (KPIs). The design and technical details of the system implementations are reported, along with use case scenarios. Results: The Policy Development Toolkit presents a unique interface and point of reference for policymakers, allowing them to create policy models and obtain analytical results for evidence-based decisions and evaluations. Conclusions: The hierarchical structure of the Public Health Policy Model offers versatility in the creation and handling of the policies, resulting in Health Analytics Tools Results Objects which offer quantitative policy support and provide the basis for meta-analytic operations.

Key words: Public health policies, big data in healthcare, policy development toolkit.